Program Notes

The music gradually unfolds in long, curving contours——there is stillness, and there is motion.
Phenomena such as beating and difference tones become apparent. The listening experience of these
compositions is similar to when one scrutinizes the microscopic detail of a painting——being aware
of and absorbing minute visual details, such as the texture of the paint, or the colour of the
pigment——the extremely slow tempi of Szlavnics’ new compositions allows us to pay attention to the
detail of sound, while being carried along by the long, gradually unfolding forms of the
compositions.

The new compositions are strikingly austere with their uncompromising silences, and the strange,
fragile beauty of their curving forms.

Gradients of Detail was composed especially for Bozzini Quartet. It is the seventh composition
resulting from a tremendously gratifying creation and compositional process which emerged in 2004
with a seminal work, (a)long lines; we’ll draw our own lines. One of the performers in the premiere
of that work was Clemens Merkel. During rehearsals in Düsseldorf, we spoke about the possibility of
a new string quartet for Bozzini Quartet——almost two years later, we are listening to the
result!

In spirit, in form, and in the nature of its utter simplicity, Gradients of Detail has a close
affinity to (a)long lines; we’ll draw our own lines, although the former was composed for seven,
mostly distinct instruments, therefore the orchestration was quite different.

In 2004, I completed a radical shift in my approach to composing, one which began around 2000,
when I began to use graphic representation in my scores because I was tending to work with
extremely slow sustains and glissandi, figures which were based on duration, and which were devoid
of the use of metred time units. I began to produce scores, for which I would use the visual
balance on each page of the score to mould the form of the work. In 2001, I produced a series of
six drawings, made with a pencil in an artist sketchbook, and decided that I preferred working with
this kind of artistic basis, to working with music notation programs, or staff paper. Suddenly
there was a freedom in hand, and it emerged that I had a kind of imaginary sound world, which I
could “draw out” on a page, and translate into music.

This new composing process can be summed up as follows: I draw sound, as literally as possible,
with a pencil (HB or 4B, depending on the piece) in an artist’s sketchbook. The left edge of the
page represents Time = 0 seconds, and the top and bottom edges of the page represent the high to
low frequency range. I do not worry about specific pitches while drawing——I am only concerned about
relative proximity of pitches to one another. I create forms which control the shaping of frequency
over a length of time, and the visual forms which are produced must fulfill a kind of visual
satisfaction, must fulfill visual criteria of balance, must be recognisable as visual art works in
and of themselves.

In this process, sustained frequencies are often set against changing frequencies (glissandi).
Traditional rhythmic units, often used as a basis for time-division, are abandoned. Taking their
place are varying rates of beating and extra-frequencies (difference tones). Traditional
equal-tempered or other “metric” divisions of equal tempered pitches to produce microtonality are
replaced with the use of just intonation based ratios, sometimes both overtones and undertones. By
drawing forms on a blank white page, without the template of representation that staff lines
automatically impose during creation, these new works exist first in a completely separate
dimension——the forms are allowed to exist first and foremost for themselves, floating free in space
(a white page being as representative of space as I can at present imagine). The integrity of the
works’ initial existence as artworks, is what guarantees the eventual strength of the musical
works, once I have completed all the tasks involved in translating them into music: using a grid to
determine pitches and timing of events, orchestrating the lines, and translating all this
information into traditional staff notation.

The freedom of this approach to composing has liberated me from the pressure of expectation from
without. It is thanks to my first composition teacher, James Tenney, and the example of a wealth of
experimental composers, that I have had the confidence to pursue something as radically different
from the mainstream as this.

I would like to stress two points, however: the initial drawings are not “graphic scores”, they
are not freely interpretable, they are very specific forms which stem from my imagination, often
for very specific instruments, and the process of scoring them is crucial to resulting musical
realisations; but also, even though I am providing detailed information about the
creation/composition process, I think it is extremely important, when listening to the performance
of the works, not to try to imagine the visual image the piece stems from, to try to forget that
the sounds represent pencil lines… it is crucial to listen to the sounds, to the musical piece, and
to try and forget everything I have just explained.

Just briefly, the forms in Gradients of Detail are somewhat related to images I drew in Canada
in the Autumn of 2004, just after my father had died. They are related to the form of the seed pods
of a plant, native to Canada, called “Milkweed”, which I happened upon while walking in the forest
to grieve. Now it is the Winter of 2005, and my mother is facing immanent death. In honour of her
tremendous influence and shaping of my life (she was a prolific visual artist, and exposed me to a
tremendous amount of new music and contemporary dance when I was a child), and to honour her own
dedication to the cultivation of her own garden behind the house——which is filled with trees and
plants native to the forests in our province, Ontario——I would like to dedicate this performance of
Gradients of Detail to her.